Thirty-two years from service van to product committee

Mandate

Rebuild the portfolio around ageing kitchen crews, longer equipment lives and honest connected features without losing the institutional tender business.

Outcomes

• Lowered the rice line's loading height to 820 millimetres and its loaded pan to 9 kilograms
• Extended repair parts to ten years after production for five core families
• Held the connected oven until its record marked gaps and uninserted probes
• Cut unavailable-part causes of unrepaired calls from 6.8 to 2.1 per cent

Decisions in context

I was the company's first chief product officer, appointed when the president decided that product planning, design and service parts should answer to one person. My mandate was to make the portfolio fit kitchens that were losing staff and keeping equipment longer. I chair the product committee that approves every brief, and I present development spending and field-safety matters to the board. The three cases on this site come from this period, and each cost the company something measurable: output, component savings or a tender. I share accountability for portfolio margin with the sales and manufacturing heads, who report separately to the president. My team includes certification engineers for six export markets and the service-parts group I once belonged to. I have learnt to bring disagreements to the president in a single paper, with the objecting colleague's case set out fairly beside mine.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; considering one compatible outside directorship.

Mandate

Give product planning a disciplined brief process that reflected how equipment was used and repaired in the field.

Outcomes

• Required service-parts engineers to sign every product brief
• Introduced in-kitchen testing with working crews for all institutional products
• Prepared the first portfolio review of parts periods and controller generations

Decisions in context

Returning from Thailand, I found that our product briefs began with competitor specifications and ended with a sales forecast. Dealers, meanwhile, were reporting customers who scrapped sound equipment for want of a board, and care-home kitchens were asking for controls that new staff could use on their first shift. I rebuilt the brief so that it opened with the people who would load, clean and repair the machine. Service-parts engineers became signatories, which slowed some approvals and stopped two redesigns that would have stranded older controllers. We also began testing prototypes in customers' kitchens rather than our demonstration room. I reported to the engineering director and presented major briefs to the management committee. The portfolio review we prepared in 2020 showed how many controller generations we were supporting, and it became the evidence for the parts decision I later took as CPO.

Reason for the move

Appointed Chief Product Officer when planning, design and service parts were combined.

Mandate

Adapt the Japanese range for Southeast Asian kitchens and build the local engineering needed to support it.

Outcomes

• Developed fryer and rice-cooker variants for bottled gas, local power and local rice
• Placed trained service engineers in three countries before starting sales there
• Declined distributor orders that required unsupported domestic models

Decisions in context

Thailand taught me that a variant begins in the destination kitchen. Hotels and caterers there cooked with bottled gas, worked in greater heat and humidity, and used rice that behaved differently from Japanese short-grain. My team adapted burners, raised component temperature ratings and wrote new cooking programmes, while certification staff worked with local laboratories on each country's electrical and gas requirements. I reported to the subsidiary's managing director, with a functional line to engineering in Osaka. The difficult decisions were refusals. Two distributors wanted domestic fryers shipped with adapters at a lower price, and I declined because we had no engineers or parts in their territories. That cost about a sixth of one year's planned sales. I also learnt to manage engineers whose first language was not mine, which changed how I write instructions and test whether they have been understood.

Reason for the move

Recalled to Osaka to lead product planning for the whole group.

Mandate

Keep the institutional rice and kettle range competitive in municipal and contract-caterer tenders.

Outcomes

• Introduced a lighter, two-piece kettle lid for the 2009 range
• Recorded crew ages and loading tasks in thirty-two customer centres
• Added cleaning access to the rice line that reduced daily washing time by about twenty minutes

Decisions in context

Rice-cooking lines and rotary kettles are bought by municipalities and contract caterers through tenders that reward capacity and floor area. I learnt the tender documents in detail, but I learnt more by spending whole mornings in school-lunch centres. The crews were older than our specifications assumed, and the heaviest tasks fell to whoever arrived first. I recorded crew ages and tasks in thirty-two centres, which later became evidence for the loading-height decision. Within my own authority I could make smaller changes: a two-piece kettle lid that one person could lift, and cleaning access that shortened the daily wash. I could not yet change the line's capacity specification. I reported to the general manager for institutional products and worked with a design group of fifteen. The appointment showed me how a tender specification can fix working conditions for fifteen years.

Reason for the move

Selected to lead product and engineering at the Thai subsidiary.

Mandate

Turn dealer service reports into evidence that designers and the quality-assurance director could act on.

Outcomes

• Built the first table linking each spare part to its products and supply end date
• Prepared evidence for field-action reviews chaired by the quality-assurance director
• Rewrote two customer safety notices for kitchen managers

Decisions in context

Kamadosei hired me partly because I had been a persistent critic from the dealer side. My work was to read service reports and returned parts and explain what they showed. I built the first table linking each spare part to every product that used it and to the date its supply would end, and it revealed how often a minor redesign had stranded older machines. I also prepared evidence for field-action reviews. The quality-assurance director made those decisions; my contribution was to separate nuisance faults from hazards and to say how quickly the affected units could be found. I rewrote two customer notices so that a kitchen manager could understand the action required without calling the dealer. I had no budget and no staff, which made persuasion the only tool available to me and taught me to bring designers evidence rather than complaints.

Reason for the move

Moved into product management for the institutional range.

Mandate

Install, maintain and repair kitchen equipment for hotels, hospitals and restaurants in the Kobe area.

Outcomes

• Reconnected and tested gas equipment in kitchens rebuilt after the 1995 earthquake
• Maintained equipment for about 120 contract customers
• Trained two junior engineers in fryer and dishwasher repair

Decisions in context

I joined Nadakaze straight from my degree and spent six years in other people's kitchens, mostly at night. We serviced equipment from several manufacturers, which let me compare how each designed for repair. Nine months after I started, the Great Hanshin earthquake damaged much of the area we served, and for a year our work was reconnecting and testing gas equipment so that kitchens could reopen safely. Later I maintained equipment for about 120 contract customers and trained two junior engineers. The lessons were practical: which parts cooks removed for cleaning, which seals failed under a hose, and which manufacturers changed boards so often that a sound machine became scrap. I reported to the service manager and ordered parts within the account limits he set. I left when Kamadosei asked me to bring the dealer's view into the manufacturer.

Reason for the move

Recruited by Kamadosei to work on field quality and spare parts.